Electronic and semiconductor components are used in ever-increasing numbers of consumer and commercial electronic products, communications products and data-exchange products. Examples of some of these consumer and commercial products are televisions, computers, cell phones, pagers, palm-type or handheld organizers, portable radios, car stereos, or remote controls. As the demand for these consumer and commercial electronics increases, there is also a demand for those same products to become smaller and more portable for the consumers and businesses.
As a result of the size decrease in these products, the components that comprise the products must also become smaller and/or thinner. Examples of some of those components that need to be reduced in size or scaled down are microelectronic chip interconnections, semiconductor chip components, resistors, capacitors, printed circuit or wiring boards, wiring, keyboards, touch pads, and chip packaging.
When electronic and semiconductor components are reduced in size or scaled down, any defects that are present in the larger components are going to be exaggerated in the scaled down components. Thus, the defects and discontinuities that are present or could be present in the larger component should be identified and corrected, if possible, before the component is scaled down for the smaller electronic products.
In order to identify and correct defects in electronic, semiconductor and communications components, the components, the materials used and the manufacturing processes for making those components should be broken down and analyzed. Electronic, semiconductor and communication/data-exchange components are composed, in some cases, of layers of materials, such as metals, metal alloys, ceramics, inorganic materials, polymers, or organometallic materials. The layers of materials are often thin (on the order of less than a few tens of angstroms in thickness). In order to improve on the quality of the layers of materials, the process of forming the layer—such as physical vapor deposition of a metal or other compound—should be evaluated and, if possible, modified and improved.
To meet the requirements for faster performance, the characteristic dimensions of features of integrated circuit devices have continued to decrease. Manufacturing of devices with smaller feature sizes introduces new challenges in many of the processes conventionally used in semiconductor fabrication.
Certain applications, such as tri-level photoresist schemes, in the Integrated Circuits (IC) industry require that a spin-on silicate film be used as a sacrificial hard mask. A dense hard mask is required to accurately transfer a pattern into the underlying film. If the hard mask is too soft (not dense enough) it is more easily eroded away in the underlying etch processes, thereby degrading the ability of accurate pattern transfer. In photolithography with chemically amplified resists, a certain degree of film density is a requirement of the substrate film, such as a UV absorbing organosiloxane film, to inhibit the diffusion of acid from the resist into itself. The loss of acid through diffusion into the underlying film leads to resist footing. Interface mismatch can also lead to problems, such as resist collapse. Thermal budgets limit how dense the silicate or siloxane-based films can be made through thermal processing. For the tri-layer resist process, the denser the silicate film, the better the pattern transfer through the underlying films.
Therefore, a coating and hard mask material should be developed that a) has increased density as compared with conventionally coating materials; b) has improved dry etch rates as compared with conventionally coating materials; c) can optionally absorb strongly and uniformly in the ultraviolet spectral region, d) can minimize resist footing, and e) would be impervious to photoresist developers and methods of production of the anti-reflective coating described would be desirable to advance the production of layered materials, electronic components and semiconductor components.